My prayer for you today was taken from in the Message Bible, Eph. 1:17-20....
I would not have missed my life in Africa for anything. It put me up against some of the real problems. I sat upon the Mount of Sources one night, and I counted eleven hundred native villages within the range of my eyes. I could see the color of the grass on the mountains sixty miles away. I could see the mountains one hundred and fifty miles away. Then I began to figure, and I said, "Within the range of my eyes there live at least ten million native people. They never heard the Name of Jesus. In the whole land there are at least one hundred million people, perhaps two hundred million. They are being born every day at a tremendous rate. Do you know there are more heathen born
I ask—ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory—to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for his followers, oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him—endless energy, boundless strength!
All this energy issues from Christ: God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven, in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule.
OH YES! IN JESUS NAME, AMEN!
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GOD wants your faith to be built upon HIS power: 1 Cor. 2:5
The wisdom of this world is foolishness to GOD: 1 Cor. 1:20
GOD anointed Jesus of Nazareth with power: Acts 10:38
(to what purpose: so that He could go about doing good and healing ALL those who were oppressed of the devil.) (Yes, Virginia, there is a devil!)
Dr. Lake Notes, Chicago 1920 Sermon
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| Dr. JOHN G. LAKE |
"One day I sat in Los Angeles talking to old Father Seymour.
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| WILLIAM J. SEYMOUR |
I told him an incident in my life of Elias Letwaba, one of our native preachers, who lived in the native country. I came to his home, and his wife said, "He is not home. A little baby is hurt, and he is over praying for it."
So we went over and got down on our knees and crawled into the native hut. I saw he was kneeling in a corner by the dying child. I said, "Letwaba, it is me. What is the matter with the child?" He told me that it hurt its neck. I examined it and saw that the baby's neck was broken, and I said to Letwaba, "Why, Letwaba, the baby's neck is broken." I did not have faith for a broken neck, but the poor old Letwaba did not know the difference, and I saw he did not understand; but he discerned the spirit of doubt in my soul.
I said to myself, "I am not going to interfere with his faith. He will just feel the doubt and all the old traditional things I ever learned, so I will go out," and I did. I went and sat in another hut and kept on praying. I went to bed at one o'clock; at three o'clock Letwaba came in.
I said, "Well, Letwaba, how about the baby?" He looked at me lovingly and sweetly and said, "Why, Brother, the baby is all well." I said, "The baby is well! Take me to the baby at once." I went to the baby and took the little black thing on my arm, and I came out and prayed,
"Lord, take every cursed thing out of my soul that keeps me from believing the Lord Jesus Christ."
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In my meeting in Spokane is a dear man who came from Texas. He told us he was dying of pellagra. He came to Sister Etter's meeting at Dallas. Apparently on the train he died, and they laid his body in the station house, covered him with some gunny sacks, but discovered in the morning he was still alive. So they carried him to Mother Etter's meeting, and she came down off the platform and prayed for him. That man is living, and has been preaching the gospel for seven years at Spokane.
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| MARIA WOODWORTH-ETTER |
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| Pellagra skin lesions |
Why, there is more science in the Son of God in five minutes than the ignorant old world ever knew. "In Him was LIFE, and the LIFE was the light of men.
"The LIFE of God is that which the mind of men, and the keenest of them, never knew, and never discovered. "The world by wisdom knew not God" [1 Corinthians 1:21].
They could not discern His death nor understand the marvels of His life, until the Lord Jesus came and lived and died and entered into Hades and destroyed the powers of darkness and liberated the souls of men, liberated them from the chains of darkness and came forth into the world to speak God's Word and reveal God's power and show God's nature. And by the grace of God, man has been privileged to enter into the nature of Jesus, and the fires of God burn in his soul like they burned in the soul of Jesus.
The scientific world has been startled by one of the English scientists who has come forward with a formula for transmitting the grosser metals into gold. It did not work. Years ago this knowledge was known to the world, but somehow it disappeared from the world. Recently men again have attempted to change lead, silver and iron, transmuting them into gold.
Beloved, that is the thing that Jesus Christ has been doing all the time. It is as old as Christianity, is as old as the Son of God. He has been coming to the hearts of men, taking the old base conditions of the nature, injecting His life into them, injecting His power into the nature, and in the mighty action of the Holy Ghost they have been changed into the pure gold of God.
If there never was another blessing that came to the world through Pentecost but this one, all the price that men could pay would be as nothing for it. For I want to tell you there has been more real divine researching by the Holy Ghost into the nature of God and the nature of men in these last fifteen years than there ever was in the whole world.
When anyone comes to me with the statement that there is nothing in the Holy Ghost but a psychological manifestation, I say, "Brother, Sister, come with me and see the gems of God and the beautiful gold that has come out of the dross and the dirty lives, and then you will know."
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In my assembly at Spokane is a dear little woman who was totally blind for nine years. She had little teaching along the line of faith in God. She sat one day with her group of six children to discover that the dirty brute of a husband had abandoned her. A debased human being is capable of things that no beast will do, for a beast will care for its own. You can imagine what that little heart was like. She was broken and bruised and bleeding. She gathered her children around her and began to pray. They were sitting on their front porch.
Presently the little one got up and said, "Oh, Mama, there is a man coming up the path, and He looks like Jesus. Oh, Mama, there is blood on His hands and blood on His feet!" And the children were frightened and ran around the corner of the house. After a while the biggest one looked around the corner and said, "Why, Mama, He is laying His hands on your eyes!" And just then her blind eyes opened.
And Beloved, if we could have seen the reason, we would have seen that there were some Christians at Zion Gate or some other place who were praying the power of God on a hungry world, and Jesus Christ in His search, rushed into her life and sent her forth to praise God and teach the Gospel of Jesus.
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I would not have missed my life in Africa for anything. It put me up against some of the real problems. I sat upon the Mount of Sources one night, and I counted eleven hundred native villages within the range of my eyes. I could see the color of the grass on the mountains sixty miles away. I could see the mountains one hundred and fifty miles away. Then I began to figure, and I said, "Within the range of my eyes there live at least ten million native people. They never heard the Name of Jesus. In the whole land there are at least one hundred million people, perhaps two hundred million. They are being born every day at a tremendous rate. Do you know there are more heathen born
every day than are Christianized in fifty years? When are we going to catch up by our present method of building schools and teaching them to read? Never! I tell you it will never come that way. It has got to come from heaven by the power of God, by an outpouring of the Holy Ghost."
That is the reason that in my heart I rejoice in the blessed promise. "In the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh" (Acts 2:17). And every last one of the two hundred million poor black people [in Africa] are going to hear and know of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And beloved, I would rather have a place in the kingdom of God to pray that thing into existence, and to pray the power of God upon them, than anything else in the world.
I began to pray. I said, "Has God no interest in these people; and if He has an interest, why is not something done for them? What is the matter with God?" My heart was breaking under the burden of it. I said, "God, there is an explanation somewhere. What is it, Lord? Tell me about this thing."
After a while the Spirit said, "The Church, which is His Body" [Ephesians 1:22-23], and I knew that was God's answer. I said, "Yes, the Church should have sent missionaries and built schools and done this and that."
But the Spirit kept on saying, "The Church, which is His Body."
"The Church, which is His Body."
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